Latest Comments

sila: whoa!! that sure looks like fun! well done on participating and great job learning! hopefully you can…Hisham: Sure thing, Luke! Hope to see the birthday wish too if it’s possible.Luke: Hi, I would like to use one of ur photo to design a birthday wish for Sitiawan. I would put a credit …Hisham: Let’s just say “Canto Bight” was originally the name of some Tapani Sector noble’s pet duck.Edward: Or the city was named after the planet. Or they were both named after some forgotten dignitary. Weird…sila: glad that opah felt better though. hope she continues to feel healthy.sila: yay to a successful surgery! i hope you are recovering nicely. i’m imagining weird things with the s…Hisham: Thanks, chief. And yes I think your name is the longest we’ve ever had on here. Haha.

About

Hisham and Sila has been writing stuff down on this weblog since 2005. Sometimes they post photos of family, sometimes they talk about film, books and music, sometimes there is artwork and stuff about tabletop gaming.

Allie was 13 months old last Saturday August 22nd, also the first day of Ramadhan. She's had another month of a full-time Mama since I am still in-between projects. And today, Allie is 13 months and 6 days old and it is the last day of my "summer break". Both sad and glad about it.

A gigantic spaceship appears in the skies above Johannesburg 28 years ago. A million starving insectoid sapients are found in the ship, and ferried groundside. Now, a guarded slum area called District 9 exists in Johannesburg that tries to keep these alien "prawns" away from humans, while the Multinational United (MNU) administrates District 9 as it attempts to pry secrets of alien technology from the dumb prawns for profit.

The movie District 9 doesn't have a particularly original storyline. In fact its premise is largely based on and a commentary on the apartheid in South Africa. It's not really very hard sci-fi, with a lot of the science relegated to background. We see and marvel at alien technology and its effect but we don't go into details. Its hand-held shakycam effects are not as motion sickness-inducing as say The Blair Witch Project or Cloverfield, but it does have some jitter even when there's no in-universe camera in action.

However, all these different factors (which includes an awesome improv performance between stars Sharlto Copley and Jason Cope) mix together perfectly to create one of the best science-fiction movie in recent years. One might argue that it's this mix of uncertain factors that made Star Wars a hit 32 years ago.

Once upon a time I had a Geocities Page, where upon I uploaded a lot of Star Wars artwork. Soon the plug will be pulled on Geocities, so a link there from here is a futile gesture. However, there are a bunch of drawings of my first ever Strikeforce Enteague campaign character for the Star Wars Roleplaying Game from back in 1989. The game started in 1989, but these drawings are from 2001 - 2002, by the way. I thought I'd upload them on here for posterity's sake. (Note: this is not every player character of that era. Someday, I'll get around to drawing everyone.)

Gauntlet starfighter, manufactured by Shobquix Yards, was created a long time ago by West End Games for their Star Wars Roleplaying Game line as can be seen here at Wookieepedia. It first appeared in Planets of the Galaxy, Vol 1 in the "Isen IV" chapter. And in its debut, it was only a tiny little stats block. No image at all.

So I thought to myself the other day, why don't I try to draw one based on the plans seen in the Wookieepedia entry above which was later released in a later publication.